Finding NASA's Curiosity rover, art-attacking microbes, and other amazing images of the week
Newsworthy eye candy
By Sara Kiley Watson | Published Jun 23, 2017 8:00 PM
A small purple people eater (jk it's a sea cuke). It might not look like a penis, exactly, but it does look like the eggplant emoji. Asher Flatt
The Australian abyssal zone is full of mysterious creatures from penis-like to Game of Thrones-esque. To protect themselves from the intense pressure of deep sea living, these creatures use a variety of protective mechanisms from hard shells to slimy and gelatinous skin like this slipper sea cucumber. Here's our roundup of this area of the deep sea's strangest looking beings.
Fungal spores munching on a Louis Comfort Tiffany drawing Di Bonaventura et al. / The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cultural relics like this painting, and even stone statues, are under attack not just from the typical elements like light and water, but also from microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and algae. This can be fought by keeping the artifacts in a cool, dry condition, but that isn't ideal for showing them off. Researchers at the University of Palermo in Italy are proposing ideas like testing garlic, mint, and tea tree oils on works of art that are open to the public. If it works, perhaps they'll be known for their beauty, and their stench.
NASA's Kepler team spotted a bunch of new planet candidates, and a few might be habitable NASA/JPL-Caltech
Earlier this week, NASA's Kepler released a mission catalog including 219 new planetary candidates, 10 of which are Earth-size and the right distance from their host star to hold liquid water. This brings the total number of planetary candidates to 4,034, 30 of which have been confirmed to be Earth-size and in their star's habitable zone.
Find NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on top of Mount Sharp (Hint: It's the tiny blue dot) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Size is relative, especially in space. (NASA's Curiosity rover)[https://www.popsci.com/nasa-curiosity-mars-rover-amazing-new-photo/] is about the size of a car, but from the view of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) 200 miles up, it's just a tiny speck. August will mark her fifth year roaming around Mars, searching for signs of ancient microbial life.
The most powerful space telescope ever built tests out it's winter coat NASA/Desiree Stover
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and is spending it's summer undergoing tests at sub-freezing cryogenic temperatures. A giant thermal vacuum chamber located at NASA's Johnson Space Center will be preparing the telescope for the brutal 50 K (-223° C or -370° F) temperatures it'll face in space.
Sara Kiley Watson
Sara Kiley Watson is an Assistant Editor at Popular Science, where she has led sustainability coverage since 2021. She started her tenure at PopSci as an intern in 2017 before joining the team full time as an Editorial Assistant in 2019. Contact the author here.